Willits resident Cierra Steel is looking for stem cell donors after relapsing in her battle with Hodgkins lymphoma. Her event will be held at Mendocino College at the Eagle?s Nest on Monday, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
(Brian Maneely/Ukiah Daily Journal)

If your life suddenly changed in an instant, if everything you once were became insignificant, where would you go from there?

For Cierra Steel, the answer is simple: go forward.

Diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma in October of 2011, Steel experienced a rapid and radical shift in perspective.

"Honestly before I was diagnosed with cancer, I was just kind of a blah person," she said. "I was just going through the daily motions and not knowing exactly who I am. I was a lost person, I guess you would say."

Steel said there was a sense of destiny to the diagnosis. The old Cierra disappeared and a new Cierra emerged.

"It made me realize I'm not weak," she said. "And I always thought I was."

Steel first noticed a lump in her neck in May 2011 when she was getting ready for reconstructive surgery on her arm. Doctors dismissed the lump, suggesting it would go away on its own, and Cierra didn't give it much thought.

Over time the lump got bigger and bigger. She finally went to a local doctor who suggested it might be a thyroid problem and did some blood tests. But because the blood tests were normal, the doctor told her not to worry about it, it would go away.

"It became so large that it was pushing on my trachea, and I was coughing a lot," she said. "I couldn't swallow regularly."

Steel was focused on her new job, her boyfriend and her family.

"I didn't even think about it," she said. "I thought 'this is not normal' but I let it go. I went to work everyday. I just lived a normal life."

"Looking back, I had all these symptoms," she said. "I had night sweats. I had a rash, all typical of lymphoma."

Several months passed and in September, her boyfriend proposed to her.

"So with all this excitement about that, I wasn't thinking about my health at all," she said.

A month later in October they went to a wedding and the inevitable caught up with her.

"I remember at the wedding I was sweating and I felt horrible, like I had the flu or something," she recalled.

The next day Steel decided she was sick enough to go to the hospital.

After four hours in the emergency room, the doctor treating her walked in with her X-ray and asked her, "Do you know what lymphoma is?

Two days later she went to an oncologist for a biopsy, which confirmed the diagnosis.

"And then the fun began," she said.

After four different types of chemotherapy treatments, Steel's lymphoma refuses to go into remission, but it's not spreading. She's holding her own against the disease and waiting for a stem cell transplant.

Cancer has hit other members of her extended family. Her sister-in-law Melanie Hernandez' melanoma is in remission. Steel says Hernandez is "an amazing person, an amazing cancer survivor".

Steel has adopted her sister-in-law's "Pay it Forward" attitude.

"I look at her and I think 'that's the mission," she said. "Why go through all of this for nothing."

Steel does have days where she's tired and doesn't want to do this anymore. But she picks herself up and keeps going. And she's never entertained the thought of dying.

"I'm living proof that someone who was a negative person and had something super- negative happen to them can look at it on a totally different plane," she said.

Her wedding is on hold. Because of her diagnosis she can't get married because she'd lose Medi-Cal coverage and would not be able to afford her treatments.

"I would be in debt for the rest of my life," she said.

Despite all the obstacles, she doesn't consider cancer to be the worst problem she's gone through.

"It's the biggest eye-opener to me. I looked at it and immediately, days after I found out I had cancer, I was like, this is my time, it's my time to change," she said. "It's my time to make something of myself."

Now looking back on her life before cancer, she realizes how much fear dictated her actions.

"It's only been a year and a half and I've whole-heartedly changed," she said. "It's not worth being negative. I was one of these people who complained all the time. I don't think I was a very pleasant person to be around," she said.

Since the diagnosis, Steel has discovered her ability to talk to people and her desire to learn and share what she knows.

"I'm discovering things about myself, and I'm not afraid now," she said.

Living free of fear has allowed her to move forward.

"I could easily have been the person I am now," she said of her life prior to cancer. "It was just easier for me to be negative, and now that I think about it I say to myself, 'Cierra, you wasted so many years, missing things you could have been a part of'."

"Something that is so scary to most people, cancer, that word gave me strength," she said.

If you'd like to help fight the battle against lymphoma and other life-threatening blood cancers, a cure does exist. Join Cierra and others at a donor drive March 18 at Mendocino College in Ukiah from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. where you can register with Be The Match Foundation and become a potential stem cell donor.

Becoming a donor is a simple. Registration requires providing a complete health history and giving a swab of cheek cells for testing. Should you be called to donate stem cells, the procedure is just about as simple as donating blood.